A wide variety of means exist for communication between users. For example, a user may conduct phone calls via a home phone, a work phone, and a mobile phone. In addition, users may also communicate using devices such as PC's, PDA's, pagers, etc. using communication protocols such as email and instant messaging.
Unfortunately, managing such a wide variety of communication means can be difficult. In particular, as a user changes location, communication with the user may vary. For example, while on travel, it may only be possible to reach a user by mobile phone. However, the user may best be reached by email while at work. Also, the user may wish to implement various rules for receiving and controlling communications. For example, to be reached at home, the user may want the home phone to ring three times before forwarding the call to a mobile phone. As another example, the user may wish to be paged each time an email is received from a particular person while away from the office.
Typically, to implement communication management, a person must individually manage each communication device separately. Thus, when the user wishes to change how communication is managed, the user may have to deal with numerous devices and, perhaps, service centers.
For example, a user may use multiple communication devices that are each assigned a different phone number or address. In addition to a device assigned a home phone number, a person may have a phone number assigned to a device at their workplace, a phone number assigned to a mobile phone, and an e-mail address accessible only via an internet-connected computer device. At any given time, the user may not have access to all of these devices.
Therefore, there is a need for providing messages to a user regardless of the device available to the user at any one given time.